LMDE 💕

In the Greek constitution, the president is obligated to give an “investigative mandate” to form government to the three top parties in order of their election results. So if you have plurality you get 3 days to try to form a government (striking deals etc) but you have to get a vote of confidence within 15 days. If none of the three leaders can successively secure a vote of confidence, it’s elections again.

The French system is way too royalist in this respect, and I suspect that our constitutional framer, Konstantinos Karamanlis, who was basically a francophile gaullist, must have been trying to balance what he saw as an excess in his otherwise favourite political system.

Basically, France you can do better, and you guys need to reform.

Of course I agree that decentralization for social media is hugely important. I’m just pointing out that there can exist use cases where centralization makes sense and/or is not a problem.

Centralization on its own is not a deal breaker. Wikipedia is centralized.

Corporate/business ownership on it’s own is not a deal breaker. There are many business mastodon instances: https://mastodonservers.net/servers/business

It’s the combination that is a deal breaker. Corporate AND centralized. We’ve seen this movie before. It’s a predictably boring story that ends with enshittification.

This is precisely the kind of thing that a future government to the right of Labour would build on precedent and do with even more ferocity.

It also is right now absolutely discrediting Labour (even more) to its own supposed constituency.

This way Labour stupidity is guaranteeing a future government to its right.

Goddamn centrists man.

This comment doesn’t add anything to this discussion.

Oh so Ursula’s appeasement didn’t work? Who would have thought.

Resources to stop war criminals are limited.

Can you please explain what the actual fuck you’re talking about? What are “resources” here and who is “allocating” them?

Funny how using the superlative form (“most”) he’s sending us into a tailspin about who is “the most serious war criminal”. As if that ordering really matters. War criminals being bad is like pedophiles being bad. Sure some are “worse” than others, but all of them are fucking creeps that need to be brought to heel.

Putin, Netanyahu, Trump, past US presidents (yea even that one), Blair, etc. All fuckfaces that every reasonable person should be denouncing.

Capitalists love interoperability when they can use it to disrupt other capitalists. When they get in a dominant position they hate it.

It’s basic enshittification theory.

Vassals

Hello Paige Saunders! I’m a big fan you smarmy kiwi yimby.

For all their clamoring about soviet oppression, I haven’t seen anything similar from the Eastern European governments.

And to our own shame, the governments of Greece and Cyprus have chosen to align more closely with Israel, despite a recent history of oppression by Turkey. Probably precisely because Turkey has gone the other way.

So it is not at all obvious that Ireland would be so fucking based. Credit where credit is due.

Excellent response. To be accompanied by a face just like this:

I’m quite impressed by the Irish government here. Standing up for crusty pro Palestine protestors by sending in their freaking ambassador.

It’s pretty satisfying seeing the Irish public broadcaster not mincing words here and calling it straight up protest assault.

First punch at 1:16. Second punch is at 1:31. Then the same coward perp-walks her.

My argument was more that these changes won’t be easy and will require lots effort and time, especially because of the scars of autocratic regimes. That’s an important step to acknowledge.

No disagreement whatsoever.

Common ground achieved :)

I hear the intensity behind what you’re saying, and I don’t doubt the weight of the history you’re drawing on. But I reject the idea of eternal cultural essence: Russia is not doomed to repeat itself. My point is political, that regimes can and will change. Essentializing entire peoples closes off that possibility.

Of course there will be no democratic Russia without changes. Putinism will have to be dismantled of course.

But what you and the person you respond to are doing is ridiculous. You’re not talking politics, you’re talking “culture” as if that’s something immutable, monolithic and finalized.

For fucks sakes, Russian history itself shows exactly that culture isn’t that!

And I find completely ridiculous this weird pitting of Russian vs European cultures as something meaningful. Do I need to name drop a bunch of GIANTS of European culture that are Russian? Russian culture is a quintessentially European culture, Russia is a key component of European modernity, it’s not a foreign body, it never has been.

But ultimately what I really want to push back is this apolitical Orientalist Huntingtonian bullshit that reduces everything to monolithic essentialist cultures. That’s just vulgar privincialist anti-politics.